I heard it was from some kind of Lawsuit from a gun writer in shooting times magazine. Some people called him a traitor ! Can't remember his name.

He is Rick Jameson.

Some years ago I was reading his reloading column in Shooting Times mag. He was at that time writing about cartridges (made from cut-down 404 Jeffries brass I think). This must have been around 2000.

Later in 2002 or 2003 both Winchester and Remmy came out with their own "short mags" and Jameson sued and won. As a result of the judgement, Winchester closed its' doors and both win and Remmy were eventually sold to other company s with deeper pockets.

The shooting community judged Jameson as greedy so he lost his ST writing column and also his brass company.

And this is the short version!

I think the point that the court missed is that rifle makers have been chambering each others' cartridges for 100 years. .308 Rem vs .243 Win. And the list continues...

Thanks for the info on Jamison. Searching on his name I was able to find a bunch of stuff out on the Internet including the blow by blow from the patent infringement trial.

However I did not find any legal distinction between any of the WSMs that would explain why the 7mm WSM is the poor stepchild. From what I can see any royalties paid would apply to them all. Thus the mystery remains.

Nevertheless, I'm glad somebody invented it as it seems to be a fine cartridge - especially when you set it up where big bullets don't steal case capacity. Also, I like that it headspaces on the shoulder and I can stick the barrel on a short action or long depending on what I'm doing with it.